


too young and blind to see

by savrenim



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Don't say I didn't warn you, I blame it on a gorgeous piece of art on tumblr, M/M, One-Shot, Some angst, at least not as sadly as the actual Little Mermaid legend goes, but it is a little bit sad okay, doesn't end completely sadly, so at least you don't have to be worried about that, this is literally a Little Mermaid AU, tw: cutting and suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6433234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savrenim/pseuds/savrenim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron Burr is a mermaid. Alexander Hamilton <em>was</em>--until he traded his voice for legs and left for the upper world to go try and make a difference. Aaron thought he'd died. Everyone thought he'd died.</p><p>Until he hears Alexander's voice on the wind, and knows that he has to try too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	too young and blind to see

**Author's Note:**

> This fanart is gorgeous:
> 
> http://ogygianprincess.tumblr.com/post/141744930366/poor-aaron-burr-wants-to-be-on-the-shore-where-it
> 
> and I blame it entirely on why I wrote this fic. So. Um. Yeah.

Aaron Burr makes a habit of staying away from the shore. It’s the sea foam, he doesn’t like to talk about it. When his parents died—

(none of them were supposed to die, mermaids were supposed to be _immortal_ , but that didn’t seem to stop everyone who ever loved him from dying)

—the old legend was that they’d turned into sea foam. So he avoids it.

~~~

Today there’s a voice on the wind. It almost reminds him of the days that he and Alexander Hamilton—

_everyone who loves me has died_

—another orphan mermaid, another anomaly in the wide, wide sea, and he’d stuck to Aaron’s side like barnacles to the bottom of old ships, only Aaron hadn’t minded. Hamilton would talk about this and that, but there was nothing Hamilton loved to talk about more than the Upper world. How much he wanted to go there, the politics, the machines, the invention, the nations—

“Democracy, Aaron! Every person gets a _vote_ , none of this outdated monarchy that doesn’t even care, no old Gods, some of them are atheists! And their science and their—their technology, they have boxes that you can speak into and your voice can be heard miles away. And schooling, actual legitimate schooling, learning is _encouraged_ , you can write books and just think about paper that doesn’t disintegrate at the touch, think about how much it would _mean_ for your words to get to last forever.”

“Humans die,” Aaron had said. “We don’t. Your words _can_ last forever.” _As long as you stick around to keep saying them._

But Aaron hadn’t said that, and Alexander hadn’t been stoppable. He’d disappeared one day. Rumors were, he’d gone and found a Sea-Witch. Had traded himself legs for his voice. Had disappeared to the Upper world.

Aaron knows how this story ends, he always knows how this story ends. ‘And the Little Mermaid dies.’

~~~

But it sounds like Alexander, so he lets the current take him just a little bit closer to the shore, and before he knows it he’s actually hiding under the docks. _What am I doing?_ he wonders. It’s something he’s taken to wondering a lot lately. _What am I waiting for?_ There have been a lot of changes going on under the sea—increasing in human technology and more importantly, in human pollution, has been enough to even begin upsetting mermaid society. Or perhaps some people have just grown tired of watching species that they’re somewhat close to suddenly dying. Alexander would love it, the upheaval, the chance to make a _difference._

Aaron wishes he could, but it reminds him a little too much how much he misses Alexander. So he avoids it instead. He’s made a habit of looking at old shipwrecks, cataloging them, preserving them for as long as he can. It’s not like paper lasts under the water, but he has a long memory, and it’s nice to look after something. To feel like he’s doing something.

“There is no ecosystem more complex—or more _fragile_ —than our oceans! They cover more than 70% of the planet, and that’s just covering, it’s what’s underneath that’s so incredible and if this bill passes—excuse me! Excuse me sir, do you like the breathe? Do you know what percentage of Earth’s oxygen is produced by algae? Species that are getting—If you look at the list of threatened and endangered species in this world, do you know how many of them come from the seas?”

It’s Alexander. There’s no doubt that it’s Alexander, who _else_ could talk that fast and with that much passion and something falls off the dock and into the water and Aaron has darted out to grab it before he can even think, and in doing so, drags the paper underwater. It’s a pamphlet. Talking about environmental issues, importance of protecting the seas, naval regulations.

The paper falls apart before he can get more than a page in.

_Alexander._

His words are there. He’s still _alive._

~~~

Now that Aaron knows, he can’t stop thinking about it. Alexander prancing around in the Upper world with legs (if the phrase ‘shapely calves’ ever enters Aaron’s mind again he’s going to shoot himself in the head), Alexander talking, Alexander _writing_ , Alexander’s words flowing every which way and being carried by the winds and he can’t stop hearing them, can’t stop thinking about everything that Alexander Hamilton wanted to do and everything that he’s doing, can’t help but long—

Long to be there too. The room where it’s happening, the _world_ where it’s happening. Alexander left him behind without a second thought, and maybe that’s why, because Alexander would always fight for what he wanted instead of waiting for it.

Aaron thinks about it carefully.

Firstly, if Alexander Hamilton made it to the Upper world, it must mean that there actually exists a Sea Witch, and they will be findable. Fine.

The usual deal in the fairytales goes “your voice for legs, you have a year to seduce them, or you die.”

Fine, Aaron can handle that, he and Alexander have always been close, and Alexander falls in love with things easily. Besides, Aaron will be the one person who ever be able to understand Alexander, he was the only person who _ever_ listened to Alexander before he left for the above world, they used to be _inseparable_ , there’s no way that Alexander—

that Alexander feels nothing for him.

But he thought there was no way that Alexander would leave him behind, and, well, here he is.

He’s not going to get left behind this time. He won’t throw away his shot.

~~~

Whatever Aaron Burr expected from a Sea Witch, he didn’t expect from Thomas Jefferson. Young. Handsome. Either the most fashionably dressed, or most eccentric person Aaron had ever set eyes on. Aaron wouldn’t know, he didn’t get out much. Either way, it was very jarring, compared to the surroundings of “murky cave” and “craggy rocks” and “there were a lot of scary eels that I had to swim through to get here.”

“What can I do for you?” Thomas Jefferson had asked, his voice curling with a southern drawl. (Alexander had been extremely interested in linguistics and accents and had dragged Aaron around for a whole year trying to catch different speech patterns from different regions.)

“The usual deal,” Aaron had replied stiffly.

“In love with a human?” Thomas had said, and had smirked in the most condescending manner. And then Aaron had hesitated.

“I—suppose.”

“Their name,” Jefferson had asked.

“Alexander Hamilton.” Aaron said—he hadn’t even meant to say it, the words were forced from his throat by whatever ungodly power colored the waters down there. And Thomas Jefferson’s eyes had narrowed, and Aaron had felt, for the first time, like he’d just made a terrible mistake.

~~~

Thomas Jefferson escorts Aaron personally to a very nice apartment, helps him stock the cabinets with food, takes him to buy groceries and shows him how credit cards work, gets him fitted for a suit, helps him get a computer, a phone, shows him how lights and running water works and all the things he has to do to take care of a human body. He gives Aaron a run down in politics, modern history, waves his hands about the state of math, science, technology, waxes on about religions and socially acceptable views. Explains the college education system, shows Aaron the papers that he’s somehow acquired amidst the passport and license and photo ID of an actual _newspaper_ clipping of “the Prodigy of Princeton College” with a picture of a younger Burr, explains how Aaron has gotten a degree from Princeton College, then Harvard Law School.

Tells Aaron that he has one year to win an election against the incumbent Senator from New York, Philip Schuyler. Explains that Aaron is a Republican—a word that Aaron doesn’t quite know the meaning of yet, but will soon—and that Thomas’s people will be more than happy to assist him with his campaign. That the election is very, very important.

If Aaron wins it, he keeps his legs, he gets to be a human, he gets to change the world, and Thomas will be _very proud_ of him.

And if he loses, well, he dies.

~~~

Aaron can handle this. He can. He takes deep breaths, and he gets to work.

He goes to the campaign office and he meets his staff, shakes their hands. There’s a very nice woman, Theodosia, who explains how these things go. Helps him go over his resume, tells him what sort of connections he has and can build on, gives him advice on how to start stepping into the public eye. Laughs away his concerns and says that people will remember him, albeit faintly, it won’t just be like he’s appeared out of nowhere, that’s not how Thomas’s magic works. He’ll be announcing his candidacy in less than a month, so there’s a lot of work to do. She helps try to make him feel ready and comfortable in any way possible. She even takes him out to coffee one night at Taste Buds, which has the best tiramisu in the tri-state area, she claims.

He learns bits and pieces about her—she’s a single mother, and she was dying of cancer. “Was” being the key word; everyone here owes Jefferson something. She shrugs, laughs, says she’s safe as long as she helps run these campaigns and she’s very good at what she does, so it’s not like Jefferson will lay her off. She shows him a picture of her daughter that she keeps in her wallet, and for a moment, Aaron has the strangest feeling that they’re a family, the three of them, that it’s them against the world.

That they’re happy, that things are simple, that they are all just humans and there’s not a Sea Witch’s impending doom hanging over the both of their heads.

He thanks her profusely and returns to his apartment alone that night, and proceeds to do what he has done every night since he got here.

He gets out a sheet of paper, he places it in front of him, he stares at it, and he tries to write.

~~~

He almost manages to forget about Alexander in the blur preparing for his candidacy—the positions that he has to memorize, talk show hosts, famous celebrities, practice interviews that Theodosia gives him, answers to every single question that he ought to just have on hand which means he needs to know _everything_ about this world, how to hold himself, how to conduct himself, how to be the best candidate possible. He’s been invited onto some television show—one of the big, fancy ones, but he can’t for the life of him remember the name—to talk about his schooling and where he’s gone from there and some of his legal work, and they’re using it to make the announcement of his candidacy. Theodosia’s written out nice notecards for him: that he’s a man of the people, that Philip Schuyler is an out-of-touch aristocrat, that Aaron’s done a lot of pro-bono cases and charity work and wants to genuinely make things better, that he’s to take mild stances on everything. Deflect, smile, deflect more.

She squeezes his hand before he gets out in front of the camera. “You’ll be fine,” she says.

He tries to believe it.

~~~

He’s two months into the campaign—and oh god, there’s so little _time_ , he’s got a few months and no one knows who he is or what he does so he’s planning a strategy with Theodosia about going from small town to small town and holding small rallies, giving talks at colleges, anything to get his name out there, when he runs into Alexander Hamilton on the street.

“Burr? Since when are you a fucking Republican?” Alexander spits at him.

“It—that was Jefferson’s price for me to be here, Alexander, I—“ He moves forward as if to embrace Alexander, and Alexander shoves him back.

“No, we are not letting this go, a Republican? A fucking Republican? Do you believe a single one of their positions?”

“It doesn’t matter, I just have to win this election and then I’m free,” Aaron says. “Like how you got your voice back, it was your voice, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alexander says very crossly. “You’ve completely ignored me and all attempts I made at communication since we were friends in college, and then out of the blue you decide to go into politics? For no reason other than to _win an election_? God, you think you know a man.”

“Alexander, wait!” Aaron says, and his chest is constricting and he’s somewhat afraid that he’s going to faint then and there because the possibility of Alexander _not remembering_ had never really occurred to him. “It’s—it’s more complicated than that, please, I only wanted to—“

_To see you again. To see the world with you again, to get to catch glimpses of the world through your eyes._

“Life’s not the same without you,” Aaron says. “Hasn’t been. There was some…family stuff that I couldn’t leave behind. And I wanted to see you again, but then the campaign…” He trails off. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Alexander stares at him for a moment, then rubs his temples. “Talking to you is giving me a migraine right now, Burr. You can’t just abandon a man and then pick up where you left off seven years later. I’ve got…I’ve got something to do, I—plans. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you around, I guess.”

 _Seven years._ Aaron hadn’t realized it had been that long, Aaron hadn’t been counting, or maybe time passed differently under the sea.

‘Wait,’ he wanted to say, but he pursed his lips and didn’t say it, and Alexander was gone.

~~~

“He doesn’t remember me!” he shouts at Jefferson, his hands hidden as fists under the table to try to disguise their trembling. “He doesn’t remember!”

“Of course,” Jefferson says. “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? Can’t exactly go about winning the love of someone who was already in love with you. And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You were ready to trade anything for his love.”

“For his—“

“Oh, he used to write about you all the time, then talk about you all the time, Madison told me, he was insufferable. Burr this and Burr that. You know he’s never married, never settled down. Maybe he will now that he doesn’t remember you.”

“I thought this was about the campaign,” Aaron grits out. “That was the deal. I win you your Senate seat—“

“I could win myself a Senate seat,” Jefferson says. “The campaign is just a bit of fun. If you can get your dear darling Alexander Hamilton to fall in love with you, then consider our deal complete, and you’ll keep your legs.”

“And he’ll get his memories back?” Aaron says.

Jefferson sighs. “Yes, fine, he’ll get his memories back. Although they fade naturally, the longer you spend time as a human, that’s what humans do, they invent explanations for things that they don’t quite remember until they’ve re-written their own past. I hardly had to change anything.”

“You should have _told_ me—“

“You should have read the fine print!” Jefferson snaps. “What, did you really think you were special? that I was going to hold your hand through all of this? I’m a witch, darling, this is about as much amusement as I get, and I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth. So go, try and win your Hamilton back, see as your campaign crashes and burns around you while you do. Republicans aren’t very fond of relationships between two men, you know. Nor are they fond of Alexander Hamilton.”

“I’ll win the campaign,” Aaron says. “That’s how it’s written in the fine print, I win and then you’re out of my life.”

“Sounds like a deal,” Jefferson says.

~~~

Aaron starts polling ahead, starts gaining support. He’s very good at appealing to young voters, and to middle-ground people. His records are impeccable, his resume specifically designed for him to win this election, and his team is fantastic. He speaks on more talk shows. It starts to come naturally, he starts to get a feel for how this world works, he starts to feel comfortable in his own skin.

It doesn’t last.

Out of nowhere comes a young, upstart candidate—well, not out of nowhere, from an esteemed Virginian family with a lot of historical and political connections that Aaron can’t follow, and he’s somehow running for Senator of New York and not Virginia and Aaron’s not sure how (he’s Thomas Jefferson, that’s how.) Aaron watches Jefferson hold rallies with thousands of people, watches campaign ads fill his television, there are posters on every lawn, it seems, buttons, new articles in the newspapers every day. ’Thomas Jefferson’ is the name on everyone’s lips.

(“Why don’t we have buttons and posters?” Aaron asks Theodosia one day, and she purses her lips and says that they have very limited campaign funding, but not for him to worry, this is something for her to take care of.)

Thomas is also a Republican, though, and from what Aaron can tell, Aaron’s a lot more popular with the Democrats who are tired of Schuyler and ready for literally anyone not so out-of-touch with the working class, than he is with a lot of Republicans. So he begins to change his stances to those even milder and court that electorate, and it works, his poll numbers get higher and higher.

Theodosia goes home one day feeling sick, and doesn’t come back.

Aaron redoubles his efforts.

~~~

It happens on a talk show. It always happens on a talk show, Aaron doesn’t know why this country is so obsessed with talk shows and then he remembers Alexander talking about how humans had boxes that they could speak into and their voices could be heard from miles away, and he wants to cry.

The host asks Alexander something or other about the election season, and after Alexander is done tearing apart pretty much every candidate on the Presidential ballot (the Democrats are apparently running someone named John Adams who seems to be very incompetent, if Alexander is to be believed), the host asks about the Senatorial race in New York State. How strangely enough it seems to be between two _Republicans_ , completely fresh-faced to boot. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Did he have any opinions on who he was going to be voting for, especially considering how he’d spoken out against some of Schuyler’s positions?

“I’ve spoken out against everyone’s positions,” Alexander says. “And I’m certainly not going to vote Republican. But if it came down to that? I was roommates with Burr in college, I can tell you this. Jefferson has beliefs, Burr has none.”

~~~

Thomas Jefferson wins in a landslide. Aaron is well aware of what it means. Aaron is well aware of what the knife that is pressed into his hands means.

He makes his way to Alexander’s apartment—did he ever even know where Alexander’s apartment was?—in a trance. He slips up to the second floor, tries the door handle, it opens, slips inside. Moonlight spills in from an open window, and he picks his way across the room. There are so many haphazard piles of things—books, papers, clothes, dishes, anything and everything. It’s so _Alexander_ , he used to hoard stuff back under the sea too, he couldn’t get enough of it all, didn’t want to let anything go.

Alexander’s laying on his bed, hands folded peacefully on top of the covers, eyes closed, neck bared. It would be easy, it would be so easy, for Aaron just to slit his throat. For Aaron to _live_. Aaron hovers there, knife an inch above the skin, as seconds stretch into minutes and tears pool in his eyes and he can’t do it, he won’t do it—

~~~

James Madison liked to think of himself as kind. Mostly, he was too old and too tired to be cruel. Thomas enjoyed playing petty games with the poor unfortunate souls who came to beg them for the wishes to deep and dark to pray for. James Madison, somewhere along the lines, had actually taken to trying to help them.

James doesn’t remember every single face that passes through Thomas’s caves. If you asked him, he wouldn’t have remembered the young merman who came begging for legs so that he could go into _politics_ , Thomas’s usual deal of “you have one year to get yourself hired before you die, oh, and no voice,” how he’d checked up on the kid after a week or two—at least Thomas had taken to giving papers, passports, a social security number, or New York City would have eaten Hamilton alive—but Hamilton was sitting there in a small, shitty apartment, in the bathtub, crying.

James Madison wouldn’t have remembered the hasty words that the boy had scrawled down on a sheet of paper— _and I was so stupid, I can’t believe how stupid I was, Burr told me that I should have stayed under the sea and that my words would be heard there and all I wanted was for my words to be heard and now I’m going to die and no one’s ever going to hear my voice again and all the things I wanted to say, god, I never even told him goodbye, I can do so much I can change this world but no one will listen to me_ —

James Madison wouldn’t have remembered plucking the pencil from the boy’s hands and writing underneath, _but you can write._ Wouldn’t have remembered taking the boy to a public library, sitting him down at a computer, nudging him towards various issues, even getting drafted into writing a few essays himself. (29 essays, precisely. Hamilton had wrote 51 in the six months they’d worked together and would have kept writing except some politician named George Washington tracked him down and hired him on the spot to be a speechwriter and personal assistant and that was that. Alexander Hamilton was saved, and James returned to the sea, and forgot.)

James Madison had seen young mermaids and mermen in Aaron Burr’s position quite a lot, though. The tune was always the same: fell in love with a human, the human didn’t love them back, the human chose someone else, and it’s down to a single night and you either kill them or you die yourself.

Only when humans die, they’re reincarnated. Humans were never meant to live forever, they were meant to come and go and make their mistakes and live and die and live again, always in a cycle. Merfolk were immortal, so when merfolk died, they died for good. No bodies, no soul, nothing to remember them by other than a bit of sea foam that slips down into the ocean.

And to one as old as Madison, the difference between snuffing out a light a little sooner than it was meant to go, one that would come back anyways, and allowing the forever-death of a sentient being that _wasn’t meant to die_ , there was no question.

They were never able to do it. They were always still in love.

So James Madison always coats a bit of poison on the blade before Thomas hands it over to the poor, unfortunate soul.

~~~

Alexander gives a small exhale, and then he wakes up. And freezes, as he catches sight of Aaron hovering above him and the knife to his neck. His eyes widen with recognition and he surges forward with a “Burr?” and the tip of the knife nicks his skin and as soon as it’s begun it’s over, Aaron sees the light in his eyes fade and then falter completely as he falls back onto the bed.

And just like that—he’s dead. Aaron feels something _click_ in him, some sort of weight, some sort of finality, and he looks at Alexander’s face and—

oh god, all his memories of Alexander are running through his head and they already feel waterlogged, every single word that Hamilton had said to him that he used to be able to recall with perfect clarity is now like trying to read a paper underwater as it disintegrates, he remember’s hearing Hamilton’s voice, remembers finding the paper underwater only—how could he have done that, how could he have been breathing so deep under the pier and it was cold this time of year not to mention the riptides, how—

No, no, he pushes those thoughts from his mind, clings to the memories of when things were simple and he and Alexander both lived together under the sea, when they’d explore the shipwrecks together so Alexander could piece together new theories about how the Upper world worked before Alexander grew tired of them and wanted to try to snag tidbits of information in more dangerous ways, the days that they’d floated in reefs basking in the sun and the whole world had been quiet, the _lifetimes_ they could have spent together—

Oh god, if they’d only had more _time_ —

“Please, take me, not him,” he says, “Please, take me, not him,” over and over again as he tries to nick himself with the knife and when it doesn’t work, tries to cut deeper into himself, but the magic is _gone_ and it’s only a blade and he can never slice deeply enough for the whole world to fade into blackness.

(He stumbles around until he sees a gun, sitting neatly on the desk, as if it’s waiting for him, one that most certainly wasn’t there when he entered the room, and he takes it, and he shoots.)

~~~

Somewhere, somewhen, in the middle of New Jersey—as these things don’t tend to happen in a linear manner, a baby is born. “Aaron,” says Esther Edwards. “We’re naming him Aaron.”

In some impoverished island in the Caribbean, maybe a year earlier, maybe a year later, who really knows with these things, a whore named Rachel Faucette gives birth to a boy. “Alexander,” she calls him.

One day, that boy will get on a plane, one day, he’ll write his own deliverance and he’ll make it all the way to New York City and he’ll bump into a stranger on the street—

_Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir? (Not that he’ll know Aaron’s name, it’ll be an errant thought, gone before he can remember it)._

—and they may or may not confess their life stories to one another, they may or may not learn about all of the things they have in common, may or may not get dinner and then grab a drink to go and wander around and end up on the pier, staring out at the ocean together, nursing said drinks as the sun sets behind them and the light gleams on the water, and Alexander might just lean his head over on Aaron’s shoulder and Aaron might just lean into it instead of brushing him off, and they might leave that way, walking back hand in hand towards the bustle of the city, so blessedly forgetful of the foam atop the waves.

**Author's Note:**

> (I guess I exist on [tumblr](http://www.queenofquell.tumblr.com)?)


End file.
